Seattle to New York December 31, 2012/January 1, 2013

We left the hotel promptly at 4 am, about the time we were supposed to be meeting the team.  We arrived at the airport, just ahead of the team, ready for the adventure ahead of us.

The team consisted of some newbies to New York, Baylie, Isaac, Kelly, and Maureen--who had been in New York before but not to NYSUM.  The vetrans were Kent, Ben, Kimberly, Jill, Sebastian, Kirsten, Jamie and myself.

We arrived to a beautiful, sunny, cold day--still trying to figure out, do we go to Times Square or not.  The media was saying there would be a million people there.

We unloaded our stuff into NYSUM at about 5 pm and headed to one of our favourite spots, Piazza Pizza, still owned and operated by the same people as the first time we went to NYSUM in 2002.

We filled up and then headed to Times Square, we knew we wouldn't get anywhere near the "action" but it was good to get the "big lights, big city" out of the newbies and to have a little fun.

We wandered around 5th Avenue, found our way to Rockefeller Plaza, looked at the huge Christmas Tree and skating rink.  We tried to get into St. Pat's Cathedral, but it was closed.  We walked up to 59th/5th, FAO Schwartz was closed, but the kids got to see the Apple Store, get on some wifi, which birthed the first of many quotes from the trip.

"Maybe there's wifi here?"

We got home and into bed at a decent time.

January 1st we got up and had breakfast and headed out to the 9/11 memorial.  Some had seen it before, like Kim Tingstad, who saw it in 2002 and 2003, when ground zero was nearly at it's worst.  Kent who saw it in 2008 when it was just a flat piece of land with a newly dedicated subway station (Cortlandt Street Station) and the team from 2012 who experienced the memorial completed (without the museum).

In March a teen said to me that she couldn't really grasp the concept of the 9/11 memorial.  Being that she was about 4-5 years old when it happened, I thought of a way of capturing the significance for her.  So, I asked the teens to go find his/her name in the computer and take a picture of the name.  In that, they would think about the fact that it was a real person who is now gone.

This trip, Kent did the exercise, he found his name and took a picture:



I loved how the only place in New York without garbage is this memorial.  I wondered as I walked if it would stay that way.

From there we went to Chinatown and Times Square.  The next day would be our first official work day.